rewarded in heaven and sin punished in hell. Their sexual ethics had a strictness that was rare in
antiquity. Pliny, whose official duty it was to persecute them, testifies to their high moral
character. After the conversion of Constantine, there were, of course, time-servers among
Christians; but prominent ecclesiastics, with some exceptions, continued to be men of inflexible
moral principles. I think Gibbon is right in attributing great importance to this high moral level as
one of the causes of the spread of Christianity.
Gibbon puts last "the union and discipline of the Christian republic." I think, from a political point
of view, this was the most important of his five causes. In the modern world, we are accustomed
to political organization; every politician has to reckon with the Catholic vote, but it is balanced
by the vote of other organized groups. A Catholic candidate for the Presidency is at a
disadvantage, because of Protestant prejudice. But, if there were no such thing as Protestant
prejudice, a Catholic candidate would stand a better chance than any other. This seems to have
been Constantine's calculation. The support of the Christians, as a single organized bloc, was to be
obtained by favouring them. Whatever dislike of the Christians existed was unorganized and
politically ineffective. Probably Rostovtseff is right in holding that a large part of the army was
Christian, and that this was what most influenced Constantine. However that may be, the
Christians, while still a minority, had a kind of organization which was then new, though now
common, and which gave them all the political influence of a pressure group to which no other
pressure groups are opposed. This was the natural consequence of their virtual monopoly of zeal,
and their zeal was an inheritance from the Jews.
Unfortunately, as soon as the Christians acquired political power, they turned their zeal against
each other. There had been heresies, not a few, before Constantine, but the orthodox had had no
means of punishing them. When the State became Christian, great prizes, in the shape of power
and wealth, became open to ecclesiastics; there were disputed elections, and theological quarrels
were also quarrels for worldly advantages. Constantine himself preserved a certain degree of
neutrality in the disputes of theologians, but after his death ( 337) his successors (except for Julian
the Apostate) were, in a greater or less degree, favourable to the Arians, until the accession of
Theodosius in 379.